Embodiments disclosed herein relate to remittance systems. In particular, some embodiments relate to methods, apparatus, systems, means and computer program products for implementing a remittance system on the basis of a payment card system.
Many individuals regularly send money to family or friends either domestically or across international borders. The total annual volume of international person-to-person remittances is measured in the hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars (including transactions that involve U.S. dollars and transactions that do not involve U.S. dollars) and is increasing from year to year.
Conventional remittance channels may be expensive and/or potentially unreliable. To overcome these disadvantages, it has been proposed to base a remittance system on a payment card system, such as the very well known, worldwide system operated by MasterCard International Inc., which is the assignee hereof. In particular, MasterCard has introduced a service known as “MoneySend” by which remittances are routed from the remittance sender's payment card account to the remittance recipient's payment card account via the MasterCard payment system. U.S. published patent application no. 2008/0249929, also assigned to MasterCard, describes a remittance system based on a payment card system. The '929 published application is incorporated herein by reference.
The present inventors have now recognized that a remittance system based on a payment card system may be enhanced to provide improved services for individuals who lack payment card accounts.